Hello all, I’m looking to pick the brains of the collective Kos-Konciousness for good off grid solutions. My family has a cabin in upstate NY that’s alongside an old stone quarry. My grandfather built the place, and it’s a beautiful spot to spend vacations, but for us to make more regular use of it (and stay married!), I need to put in a couple more amenities. The big issue is to add some sort of bathroom in there. So here’s what I’m looking for advice on:
- Water filtration, storage and pumping
- Composting toilet recommendations or alternatives
I wouldn’t mind adding a bit of solar power for some night lights, so that the kids don’t bang into things if they get up in the night, or to charge a cell phone. But I don’t want to get any more complicated than I need to, and I’m concerned about leaving something like that set up between trips.
Below the jump, I’ll go into what we’ve got now. Any and all suggestions are very very welcome!
So, our cabin sits on a small ridge, alongside an old Catskills stone quarry that is filled in with spring water. (it’s COLD even in the summer – jump in and it’ll damn near give you a heart attack!). There’s a natural overflow toward one end that has a fairly steady trickle, except in the driest times. The water used to be crystal clear, but in recent years had gotten some nasty algae blooms. We think we’re getting that under control by cutting back brush around it, and by introducing some largemouth bass to eat minnows that some bozo dumped in. We’ll see this summer!
Here are some more details on the situation.
-The cabin floor is about 5’ off of the water level, and the water runs to about 7’ deep at that end. The cabin is about 30’ from the water.
- The water is an artesian spring, as the cabin is on a hilltop.
- We get pretty good sun most of the day at roof level.
- The cabin has a shed roof, with no rain gutters currently. (I’ve thought about rain barrels, but worry about storing water)
- Our typical trips , if we can make this work, would probably be twice a month from the spring through fall, for a weekend or long weekend. Occasionally we’ll do a week long trip. (this seems like an issue to me, with the water systems sitting idle for a time between uses.
-I do have a good, downhill location away from the quarry to drain greywater
- Money IS definitely an object, but if I can phase this out over a few years, it’s worth an investment.
- One resource we’ve got in spades is waste bluestone (apparently it’s a sandstone, but that blows my mind as I always thought it was a type of slate or shale!) Interesting if not useful to this application. On the other hand, it’s a neat lesson in the industrial history of the area.
- I’d like to avoid solutions that depend on disposable parts or having to sterilize the system after every weekend. I can envision doing two separate systems – one for bottled drinking water and a second for a toilet / shower.
So, if you’ve got experience with solving these kinds of problems, or can point me toward some good resources, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve done some poking around on "off the grid" sites. My worry is that our intermittent use of the cabin is different enough from living year – round off the grid to introduce some different health and maintenance concerns. This place is very special to my family - when I was my kids' age, we'd spend every other week up there, my dad commuting to work every day.
THANK YOU!
One more thing - and this ties in with the stone quarry. If you're travelling through NY this summer, definitely check out the spectacular Opus 40, a truly incredible landscape / sculpture / installation that's in the neighborhood. Among other things, it serves as a monument to the quarrymen who are an important and overlooke part of the region's industrial history.
Opus40.org